Business Essentials Package

What is Business Essentials?

Our most popular package is FSB Business Essentials which includes a whole range of benefits and products designed to make your business fly

What's included?

A suite of legal benefits including a dedicated helpline, bundled insurance products and a range of online information to keep your business safe. Plus a whole range of negotiated benefits to help save you money and win business.

Chris Green's Story

'Within a few weeks of joining we'd taken advantage of FSB’s Online Legal Documents. We started a graduate programme and access to these documents gave us an understanding of the legal side, and has helped us to create a number of processes and procedures.'

Marc Wileman's Story

'When we first took on a member of staff, we used the online legal document template library. FSB does more important stuff than you think it does, there are lots of member benefits, probably more than we actually use.'

How much does FSB membership cost?

We offer three packages to suit your business needs. Joining FSB Connect is free, our Business Essentials package starts at £172.50 in the first year and our specialist Business Creation package has a fixed price of £129.

When should I begin debt recovery?

Businesses, for the most part, succeed by being paid for the goods and services they offer. When a client or customer doesn’t pay for those good or services, it can have a damaging effect on a business – on its cash flow, growth and relationships.

This is why it’s important that a business which is owed money should have the tools to recover any debt it’s owed. But when exactly should the process of debt recovery begin? This blog aims to help you understand the process.

Try communicating first

Sometimes, a lack of payment might be an oversight, like a missed invoice or a banking issue. While this is unfortunate, it does happen. For instance, a client may have recently relocated, so some financial documents might have been misplaced. Or a client might have employed a new financial manager, who has taken over from a more experienced employee and they are still getting to grips with their invoicing system.

If a payment date is missed, it’s important to contact the party in question first. There could be a perfectly good reason for a lapsed payment, which they can rectify and pay you the amount owed, so there’s no need to pursue any further action.

Final deadlines

You might be in a situation that means you are constantly chasing a problematic customer. They might have repeatedly missed payment deadlines, which has created a financial situation that’s resulted in you stopping work for that client until they’ve settled any outstanding debts.

They could also be accruing extra interest and late fees from you as a result of not paying, which increases the amount they have yet to pay you.

In these situations, you should send the client a final written warning. The letter should outline that the next step of the process will involve legal proceedings. It should state that you’ll start a debt recovery process against them, unless payment is agreed upon by a specified date.

Beginning debt recovery

If that final notice is ignored then debt recovery proceedings should begin. This is a legal process that allows you to have a debt recognised and reclaimed.

The process for this is explained further in our blog post, What is the process for debt recovery. This highlights the various options available to businesses when they’ve undertaken debt recovery proceedings.

Debt recovery is a last resort once communication between your business and a client has failed to yield results. This involves enlisting outside help to legally enforce and reclaim your outstanding debt from that client.

How can FSB help with debt recovery?

Failure of a client to pay on time can cause a business a variety of financial problems, especially if they’re just starting out and need the funds to help grow their company.

To help businesses recover debts, FSB offers access to a debt recovery service as part of its Business Essentials package.

This service includes a range of features designed to help businesses with debt recovery, including:

Exclusive FSB Debt Recovery platform, accessible seven days a week, all year round

Full UK and global collection service

To find out more about how FSB could help your business deal with late or lapsed payments, visit our FSB Debt Recovery page. To see how else our Business Essentials package could help your business continue to grow and improve, visit our package comparison page.

FSB Debt Recovery from FSB

FSB Debt Recovery gives you the opportunity to recover 100% of the money you are owed and in most cases this costs absolutely nothing